Ever wondered what you call a group of gnomes? Or the correct term for a collection of archangels? Don’t you just wish you had a handy chart to look up stuff like this? Once again, we at Trolleyed are here to help. Read on, dear Reader, read on.

Books & authors

A couple of great posts on Scott Westerfeld’s blog recently. The first one, Genre Cooties, addresses some of the negative press that steampunk had been attracting. However it was this quote that really resounded with me:

THIS is why I don’t write for adults. Their heads are all full of genre cooties and “Taj Mahal? Nah, don’t like tombs.” Whereas a kid will come home from the library with a mystery, an sf novel, an autobiography, and three books about sharks. That’s how kids read, and when something’s cool and fun and awesome (or weird and gnarly and thought-provoking)

That got me thinking….why do we lose that open minded attitude to books? We do tend to get set in our ways, and in the types of books we read. So, how do we change it? How do we challenge ourselves to be less adult (and boring) and more child-like in our selection of books?

Scott’s second post French Steampunkery is about his visit to Machines of the Isle in Nantes, France. This photos in this post had me squeeing with delight. The steampunk creations are just magnificent. The elephant is awesometastic.

YALSA (The Young Adult Library Services Association) now has an official research journal. The journal is open access and is peer-reviewed. It is sure to be a useful resource for those working and studying in the CYA area.

Techy/interwebby stuff

Google’s 20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web – this is full of useful answers to all sorts of computer stuff (y’know – all that stuff that you were too afraid to ask anyone in case it made you look stupid). I love the presentation too – very nice.

And last, but definitely not least….a very handy chart for you to print out and stick on your fridge. A list of the collective nouns for supernatural beings (and my apologies, I can’t remember the source for this chart). My personal favourites are a lawn of gnomes, and that The Borg is just that – The Borg. Not so sure about a fondle of unicorns though.

Okay. First up, here’s a confession – it’s been two months since my last round-up. Be kind – there was an earthquake, and then I moved house, then I assistant directed a very successful children’s play, then I got a pet duckling, and then I got a shiny new cellphone to play with! Yeah, I’m not buying it either. Without any further ado, here’s what’s been keeping me entertained online…